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How Expedia Buys Its Way To The Top Of Google
111–120 of 164 posts
Re: How Expedia Buys Its Way To The Top Of Google
#112This just adds to the list of why to hate Google. Basically if you are either a big brand or a spammy company or have a nimble operation, you can afford to do grey & black seo. If you are a small business/ up and coming company white seo practices are the safe choice.
> If you are a small business/ up and coming company white seo practices are the safe choice. Not (entirely) true. Here's a 'small business' sans any big-brand protection that is obviously spamming the heck out of electrician/plumber niches and has been succeeding for years. If you're near one of the relevant areas and Google "[area] plumber" you'll see a few of their sites on page 1. Not one or two. Maybe five. My f…
I know a really good restaurant with a non specific name that has made a point to have landing pages at many different sites so if you search for them the top 20 or so results are all about them
Re: How Expedia Buys Its Way To The Top Of Google
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even if you use nothing but white-hat and above-board SEO strategies, you're at risk of your page getting penalized or delisted This rather suggests that what you're calling "white hat" is a slightly less white shade than you may think. After all, who exactly is defining what "above board" is here? You're talking as though Google has some kind of responsibility to you. They don't. You are not their customer. Their…
1. The searcher is not the customer, the AdWords buyer is. For example, Expedia. 2. Once a company reaches monopoly status the government can regulate it for the public good.
1. This oversimplifies the relationship. The ultimate transaction is from the AdWords customer to Google but in most cases a lot of that money will have come from Google searchers wallets.
2. Well, that's not quite right. The government can limit the actions of a monopoly to prevent abuse, but demanding arbitrary shit isn't really something that's in the statute books.
One thing's for certain, the "white hat" "SEO"ers paying bloggers to write thin articles about them to increase their organic search ranking are certainly not Google's customer and they have no obligation to please them.
Re: How Expedia Buys Its Way To The Top Of Google
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
I smell bacon. "A little about me... I am a search marketing consultant,and I love everything about marketing and emerging technology. Growth Hacking is my strongest skillset, especially when leveraging search engines." While I'm not sure that what you're doing is technically astroturfing, it's still equally as dishonest. First, none of the links described in TFA match your "guidelines" to "Good offsite SEO", so even…
"While I'm not sure what your doing is astroturning, its equally dishonest" I don't even know what that means. But, that was written close to two years ago... I have since moved on to content development and traffic strategy. Still, Whats wrong with being a search marketer and knowing about link building strategies that are legit. Why is building a site that inherently attracts links, not both legit to google, and a…
So you used to claim "Growth Hacking is my strongest skillset, especially when leveraging search engines." Now you do "content development and traffic strategy." More concisely, you've been a web spammer the whole time.
Re: How Expedia Buys Its Way To The Top Of Google
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Conclusion: You guys are having some he-said-she-said issue that's kinda cute but doesn't change thing about the questionable Expedia tactics.
Which is in no way relevant to me, other than I worked for a different division of the same company. The only reason I got mentioned, was that I refused to pay money to not have it published, and told the author that blackmail wasnt a great idea. If someone had attempted to extort you, and were now using your name in this fashion, wouldnt you want to respond?
They singled out Abby for writing paid blog posts with targeted links. Who owns Nenad SEO? Nenad and Karine.
http://askkarine.com/2013/09/12/how-find-perfect-luxury-holiday-retreat/
http://askkarine.com/2013/05/16/how-to-become-a-yoga-instructor/
http://askkarine.com/2012/12/29/how-to-make-money-fast-using-google-play/
"Outsource your downloads (google it, there are several providers). Rinse and Repeat, as all the fake Guru’s like to say."
http://askkarine.com/2013/08/03/how-to-make-your-holiday-into-a-home/
These tweets by you were enlightening too: https://twitter.com/searchmartin/status/417260215453876224
And of course the intro to the very post:
"After receiving a manual penalty by Google for 2 small sites (for gaming the Google PR system".
I would not touch this entire fiasco with a 10-foot pole and I do not envy all involved or dragged into this.
Re: How Expedia Buys Its Way To The Top Of Google
#116Just a few emails I usually get from Expedia. "In fact, the article can be about any topic related to your blog, just mentioning at some point something like “find coupon codes for Expedia”, “get some deals in Expedia”.. Do you think that would fit in? Doesn’t have to look very spammy (we don’t want that either). What do you think? About the price, how much would it be a post like this with maybe 2 links? " AND "I’m…
How much were they willing to pay?
They have gone from $10 to $100 per sponsored post.
Re: How Expedia Buys Its Way To The Top Of Google
#117Just a few emails I usually get from Expedia. "In fact, the article can be about any topic related to your blog, just mentioning at some point something like “find coupon codes for Expedia”, “get some deals in Expedia”.. Do you think that would fit in? Doesn’t have to look very spammy (we don’t want that either). What do you think? About the price, how much would it be a post like this with maybe 2 links? " AND "I’m…
If this is accurate it is a very poor seo and Expedia needs to hire better folks. Why place two links? Google will barely count a second link on the same page to the same URL... I did notice that they give the blogger discretion on the link placement and anchor text so its somewhat natural...although still clearly link spam worth penalizing!
Every email I've gotten from Expedia has been from a different SEO company too.
Re: How Expedia Buys Its Way To The Top Of Google
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
you are mistaken. This was the case until about 2008 or so... here is a quote from matt cutts. "On expired domains, Matt said Google tries to reset pagerank/links for all expired domains to zero when they are registered by someone new. They don’t try to penalize the expired domain, but they also don’t want to give credit for the previous owner’s links." http://www.seo.com/blog/conferences/matt-cutts-does-domain-r...
This is actually a major selling point for WHOIS privacy services (for SEO) these days, if you maintain the domain with the same registrar and continue to use their domain privacy service, the records won't change and Google won't cancel your rankings. So, if you're thinking of selling a well-ranked domain, add the privacy services, because they typically boost the sale price.
I could be wrong about this, but I think I remember reading that Google became a registrar in part to get info behind the privacy services.
Re: How Expedia Buys Its Way To The Top Of Google
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because, what? You expect Cutts to be on the phone handling calls from irate webmasters instead? If Google sells me ad-space - or a Nexus - and then doesn't respond when I have a problem, that's bad. But if your pages drop in the search result rankings, suck it up and maybe pay a bit more attention to the spirit of that preaching - Google owes you ZERO customer support if all you're paying for is snake-oil from some…
It's odd that you talk about snake-oil in a thread where it's already mentioned that Google will just as easily ban you even if you follow their rules. Expedia and RapGenius are the two latest examples of how easy it is to cheat the system. Meanwhile the world commerce is moving towards the Internet and Google controls 70% of that. But you don't want to come off as "spammy" so better to risk your company and follow t…
...it's already mentioned that Google will just as easily ban you even if you follow their rules.
Are there examples of sites that have done no SEO, and can still point to a banning-type event in their search result ranking history? Obviously this wouldn't be a big site; it might just be a random business the marketing of which is mostly offline.
Re: How Expedia Buys Its Way To The Top Of Google
#120> You know all those bloggers/SEOs at MOZ giving webmasters tips and tricks on how to rank higher? Well, they never said: “Guys, you gotta do basic on-page SEO, buy quality links and you will rank higher, that’s all you need to know.” Instead they keep selling stories how their clients rank using “white hat” SEO.
GrantTree is ranked pretty high against our competitors on several keywords that are important to us. This was all entirely through whitehat SEO within about a year of setting out to do it. We've just written lots of high-quality content on our blog, and then contributed genuine, original articles to other sides and got them to include a link to GrantTree or to one of our topic sub-pages (like http://granttree.co.uk/tax_credits ) in the byline. We've never bought links, nor will we ever buy links.
Now, GrantTree's context is not super-competitive like, say, Expedia or RapGenius... but we do have competitors. So competing with good, well-structured content and genuine contributions to other sites does work - at least in some contexts.
Also, I'm frequently on the receiving end of these "your blog/site/whatever is awesome and we'd love to publish a high-quality article on your blog and we'll even pay you for it" emails, and as far as I'm concerned they are spam. I never even bother replying to them.
I'll be happy if Google nails those spammy bastards to the wall - both the paymasters and the so-called bloggers.
(Note: this makes no judgement on the claim that Expedia is partaking in this)